


After the Dome

by kerithwyn



Category: Under the Dome - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, Not A Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-17
Updated: 2012-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 17:24:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/pseuds/kerithwyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's still hard for Barbie to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Dome

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killabeez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [После Купола](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019981) by [Herber_baby17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herber_baby17/pseuds/Herber_baby17)



> Spoilers: For the whole book.

Barbie wakes with a start and hears Julia breathing next to him. Such a small sound, such an important sound. A sound forever amplified by their captivity under the dome.

He smiles a little, bitterly, shifting carefully to slide out of bed without waking Julia. "Captivity" is a word now forbidden outside his own head. Colonel Cox had done his very best to resettle the survivors, to provide new lives and, if they wanted, new identities far from media attention. And Cox's best was, as always, very good. But in those first few days of freedom they had been given, with no room for anything but obedience, their new rules of existence. They might discuss if they wished what happened to them all during those seven days, but nothing of what they saw or felt at the box, no speculation on the hows or whys of the dome. As if there could be any explanation other than the truth.

Barbie walks softly toward the kitchen, conscious of the hardwood floor under his feet, a luxury they had never dreamed of being able to afford. Most of the survivors took the offer of new identities gladly, wanting to forget their experience as soon as possible. Wanting to get on with the gift of their lives. He and Julia had been in complete accord in categorically refusing the offer; they'd taken the government's money, but not its well-meaning attempt to erase their history. Whatever they had been before had been changed, transmuted forever by the dome, but neither of them were willing to abandon those lives entirely. He was still Dale Barbara, former Army captain; she was still Julia Shumway, former editor of the Chester's Mill _Democrat._ Both careers were dust now, but the idea of forswearing those identities felt...felt like _they_ had won, that _they_ had succeeded in altering his and Julia's insignificant ant-lives forever, and--

Barbie stops mid-mental rant, breathing deeply (still, forever such an impossible luxury) and drinks an entire glass of water, slowly, not allowing another thought. Post-traumatic stress, and such a unique kind that no shrink on Earth could have a hope of untangling it. Sure, everyone felt like a pawn in someone else's game at some point. To have literally been a plaything, to have been so helpless, when the "someone" wasn't even human....

Keeping their own identities had been an act of defiance, in refusing to be wiped away, remade, by their experience. But there was no denying they had been changed, the both of them. They have the time and means to figure out what they might become now, but part of Barbie despairs at the thought of the task.

It's true, what he told Julia that day: he loves her for what she did at the alien box. Whether he might have loved her otherwise...he doesn't know. He can't know. All their choices, from now on defined by the cruel games of alien children.

All of them, still under the dome.


End file.
